Monday, 5 December 2016

A couple of weeks ago my virtual friend and occasional musical collaborator Mark Bennett pointed me towards the music of a chap going under the name of Tyrella.Whilst listening to his Wrack and Ruin album (that you can buy from the link above) I read the lyrics to As The Raven King Lay Dying and was blown away. So I wrote the little story below because, well, just because.

As
The Raven King Lay Dying

I found
him on the corner of Park Avenue and East 20th, slumped on the pavement outside
an all-night pharmacy. The day's papers were still sitting in their bundle on
the kerb and he'd snagged one but wasn't reading it; just staring across the
street as the sky lightened with the promise of another warm day.

"Fisher,"
he grunted, "come to gloat?"

"Not
I." I took the paper and stuck it underneath me as I sat next to him.
"I heard your call."

He
twisted slightly to look at me, "still as equals then?"

"Always."

His laugh
became a long, scraping cough, finished with a heavy spit onto the pavement.
"I'm done here. Through. You'll be on your own soon."

"We've
been before," I pointed out. "Berlin wasn't it?"

"It's
different this time; look at me!"

He looked
like shit. His hair had lost most of its famous colour and his massive frame
was mostly skin and bone beneath his rags and coats. Maybe he was just a couple
of hours from the morgue.

"And
my soldiers come, see…"

Another
man of rags was approaching, silhouetted in the pre-dawn it took me a surprisingly long time to recognise him.
Tall, gaunt, long grey hair and beard twitching in the soft breeze, he drew
himself to his full height and nodded to me before dropping to one knee and
giving the full weight of his gaze to the man next to me. Scarred fists as big
as melons clenched as he dropped his eyes and waited for Raven to speak.

"Gilgamesh."

"So
you named me," said the kneeling man.

"My
time's coming."

"It
need not be this way."

"But
it should be."

We waited
like that, we three, for another hour and the high clouds picked up the light
of dawn.

Gilgamesh
turned back the way he'd come, "Another comes."

This time
the silhouette was unmistakable, so broad across the shoulders he was almost
square. But he wasn't short with it, oh no; I was just one of many who, in
earlier years, had underestimated his reach and regretted it. Dark hair, dark
eyes and a dark countenance, with heavy stubble. He looked as if he was doing
slightly better than the others, but his skin was pale and his hands were
stained with wine or something more.

I got
little more than a glare from him before he too dropped to one knee.

"Czernobog,"
said the King.

"That
was never my name." The Slavic accent was still strong, even after all
these years.

"But
it's what we call you nevertheless."

And then
we waited some more. Someone came out of the pharmacy to pick up the papers,
thought about saying something but had second thoughts and went back in. The
day's early traffic built and pedestrians gave us a wide berth as we talked
about old fights and young women. A patrol car slowed but didn't stop. We must
have looked a strange bunch; Gilgamesh and the King in old coats and blankets,
Czernobog in his worn out biker leathers, me in my funeral suit.

After a
while he tried to look down the street but gave up, "Jaganath?" He
asked.

"Coming,"
I said, "but won't be here in time."

"Just
us then. And the Reaper. I see you there!" He shouted.

Maybe
there was a shadow under the traffic lights, but the sun was shining off the
office blocks and it was hard to see clearly.

Shouting
cost him heavily and when the coughing subsided he barely had breath left, just
the faintest rise and fall in his chest.

"Call
your people," said Gilgamesh, "it is time."

"No,
not this time my boys, I release them, I set them free. I set them all
free."

So we
waited a while longer until he was gone, then stood in silence as a slow
procession of the city's unregistered passed by, each leaving a feather on his
body.

Eventually
Gilgamesh sketched a mocking bow and shuffled off, his height masked by a hunch
that was stronger than when he came. Czernobog walked blindly across the
junction to a 24 hour café; ignoring the screeching brakes and horns he headed
inside and I suspected I wouldn't see him again.

Maybe it
just seemed like every bird in Manhattan was silent as I walked home. And maybe
it was just a story that a storekeeper had tried to move a tramp out of a
doorway but he collapsed into a pile of feathers and blew away down the street,
picked up by swirling eddies and lifted to catch the sunlight like a halo.